King of Sword and Sky (7 page)

He saw the war hammer swinging from the corner of his eye. The Mage cried, "Don't kill him, you idiot!" Pain smashed into his skull. Shan's body went limp as consciousness fled.

Sol clutched his daughter's body, rocking her as he had so many times in the past, singing the songs that had soothed her as a child. Blazing twenty-five-fold weaves of power formed a visible dome of magic around them. A five-fold weave had done almost nothing to ease her suffering, but the twenty-five-fold weave had at least dulled the pain enough that she was no longer screaming and convulsing.

Marissya didn't know how to heal her. The pain, whatever it was, was not coming from any wound to her body, and whenever Marissya tried to probe, Ellysetta's tairen roused with a vengeance, fierce and furious over any hint of
shei'dalin
intrusion into her mind. Rain, whom Ellysetta trusted, could not touch her without causing further pain. And Gaelen, who had suggested he spin the forbidden soul magic Azrahn to see what he could detect, had been unanimously shouted down.

Suddenly Ellysetta's spine went stiff again and her eyes flew open wide.
"K'shareth na pearson sh'verre korbay!"
she cried, her voice a ragged scrape of sound, hoarse and broken and several octaves lower than her normal tones.
"K'shafair na selltemorra sh'verre dagorren! K'shadure a daynalle pear coda la cresses! K'shafay! Shaysan lowcha!
Liesse chakai!"
She shouted the last wild words, then collapsed in Sol's arms. Her head lolled back, and she began to mutter the same unintelligible phrases over and over again.

Sol raised stricken eyes to the Fey, who were standing around him in shocked silence. "All you Fey with all your power, can you do nothing? Was Laurie right about this being demons after all?"

Bel swallowed. "Only if the demon possessing her is the spirit of a Fey warrior."

"What do you mean?" Sol demanded.

"We mean she is speaking Feyan," Rain said.

"Feyan? Then what is she saying?" Sol asked.

Rain answered, his face a blank mask. "She said, 'I am the steel no enemy can shatter.'" One by one, Bel, Dax, and Gaelen added their voices to his until they were all repeating the words together. " 'I am the magic no dark power can defeat. I am the rock upon which evil breaks like waves. I am Fey, warrior of honor, champion of Light.' "

"It is the warrior's creed," Gaelen said, "taught to every Fey boy who enters the Warriors' Academy to begin his training in the Cha Baruk."

With a sudden, fierce scowl, Rain knelt beside Sol Baristani and seized Ellysetta by the shoulders.
"Nal?"
he demanded.
"Nal ve sha?
Who are you? What is your name?"

Her head lolled limp on her neck. He caught her face between his hands. "Tell me!" The muted pain of her unseen injuries tore at his senses. Within his soul, Rain's tairen roused, hissing, power licking at his limbs and lunging against its restraints.

He felt the sudden wild surge as Ellysetta's own tairen leapt in answer. Her eyes flew open and fixed upon his face. The threads of their bond blazed to life. His tairen, Eras, roared with fury, sensing something else—someone else— there in her soul with them. Before he could react to the threat, Ellysetta's body flared bright with sudden power, and Rain's limbs went abruptly weak. Her pupils widened until no hint of green iris showed, and Rain reared back in instinctive shock and horror as, for one brief instant, her eyes shone pure black, filled with whirling red sparks.

"Ve sha Desriel!"
she cried. The combined power left her on a rush. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped, unconscious, in her father's arms.

"What in the Seven Hells just happened?" Dax demanded. "What was that?"

"I don't know," Rain snapped. "Something was there, inside her, something besides her tairen. I don't know what—maybe a Mage, maybe a demon. Whatever it was nearly brought out her tairen, and she can't control it yet. We need to get her to the Fading Lands. Right now." He spun a shout across the common Fey thread.
«Fey! Prepare for departure!»

"Rain," Marissya protested. "You can't mean to send her through the Mists now. We have no idea how they'll react to her Mage Marks, and if that seizure nearly brought out the tairen, the Mists may well finish the job."

"Marissya's right, Rain," Bel agreed. "The Mists can brutalize a Fey. She needs time to recover, to rebuild her inner barriers to keep the tairen in check."

Rain turned hard, furious eyes on the pair of them. "We don't have time. I don't know what attacked her just now, but I'll be scorched if we're going to stay around here one bell longer and give it a chance to come back. Marissya, the chime she wakes, weave peace on her. Bel, Gaelen, you two help her build what barriers she needs to keep the tairen caged and protect herself against whatever the Mists might try to do to her."

"Rain?" Sol Baristani interrupted. The woodcarver was still holding his daughter's unconscious body, stroking her hair and rocking her as he had so many times since her earliest childhood. "'Vaysha Dezrielle.' She's said that before during her seizures. Is it also Feyan? Do you know what it means?"

Rain's mouth pressed into a grim line. "It means 'I am Death.' "

Teleon was a flurry of activity as the Fey rushed to prepare for departure. As Rain had commanded, the moment Ellysetta regained consciousness, Marissya began weaving peace on her, while Bel and Gaelen helped her rebuild the internal barriers her seizure had shredded. As soon as they had finished, the Fey began marching out of Teleon.

Ellysetta, still pale and wan from her seizure, desperately tried to hold back her tears as she knelt on the shining, silver-blue steps of Teleon to clasp the twins in yet another fierce hug. She didn't want to let them go, didn't want to think of waking up to a morning when she would not see their sweet, smiling faces. But her seizure and her duty to the tairen left her no choice.

"I will miss you both," she told the twins, pulling back to press kisses on their soft cheeks and rosy lips. "I'll think about you every day—and miss you every chime. I love you so very much."

Lillis and Lorelle were crying as much as she was. "Don't go, Ellie. Stay here with us."

"Oh, kitlings, if only I could." She gave her father a pleading glance.
«Won't you reconsider, Papa? Come with us. You'll all be safer in the Fading Lands.»

He shook his head. Even if Papa thought the twins could actually be happy living as mortals in an immortal land, he wouldn't betray his wife's last wishes. "Please understand."

She bit her lower lip, ashamed that she kept urging him to break his vow.
«I'm sorry. I just want you all safe.»

"We'll be safe here. The Fey will see to that. And as I promised you, if there is even a hint of trouble, we'll come through the Mists."

Ellysetta dashed away her tears with the back of one hand and gave him a watery smile. "I know, Papa. I'm just selfish enough to want you three with me always."

Behind Sol's spectacles, his brown eyes glistened with answering tears. "Oh, Ellie-girl, if that's selfish, then I must confess the same sin, for I would keep you by my side if I thought you could ever be safe or happy there." He embraced her. As his arms enfolded her, the love that had been her anchor all her life flowed into her once more, filling her with its warm reassurance and strength. He cupped her face in his hands, then hugged her tight once more before stepping back. "Go, daughter. Find the happiness you deserve. And may the Light always shine on your path and shelter you from harm."

"Teleos." Rain clasped the Celierian great lord's forearm. "You guard our gates—both here and at the Veil—and you guard three treasures very precious to my mate." He inclined his head towards the twins and Sol Baristani. "Your assistance is much appreciated."

"It is the great honor of House Teleos to be of service to the Fey," Lord Teleos replied.

"The first thousand blades I promised Dorian leave the Fading Lands within the week. I'll bring reinforcements to Orest by month's end, along with that Fey steel I promised you for your own men. And, Dev?"

"Aiyah?"

Rain held the younger man's Fey gaze steadily. "My friend Shanis would have been proud to call you kin."

The great lord blinked in surprise, then said in a low voice,
"Beylah vo,
Rain. I only wish I could have known him."

"You do, Dev. You are much like him." They clasped arms again in a warrior's gesture of respect and friendship; then Rain turned to Ellysetta's family. "Master Baristani. Lillis and Lorelle." Rain shook the woodcarver's hand, then knelt and opened his arms to the twins, who threw themselves into his embrace with as much weeping regret as they'd shown Ellysetta.

"Here now, kitlings," he protested when their tears would not stop. "This is not good-bye. This is just farewell until we meet again." When they pulled back, he smiled and thumbed away their tears. "Be good, hmm? Listen to Kieran and Kiel, and try to stay out of trouble."

The twins nodded. "We will."

Ellysetta put her hand on Rain's wrist. As he led her away, down the steps towards Marissya and Dax and the waiting Fey, she kept looking back over her shoulder and waving at her father and the twins, and at Kieran and Kiel standing guard beside them.

"Promise me you'll keep them safe," she begged Kiel and Kieran one final time as Rain stepped away to summon the Change.

"We will protect them with our lives," Kieran vowed. "You have our solemn oath."

The wild, rich scent of the tairen swept over her. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, then turned to take her place on Rain's back. A series of thick leather straps lashed her into place—in case she were to have another seizure while flying through the Mists. Rain leapt into the sky, and her beloved family grew smaller and smaller as he bore her away. She twisted in the saddle and watched even when she could no longer make them out.

«You will see them again, shei'tani,»
Rain assured her.

Would she? Ellysetta cast one final glance back at the shrinking silvery blue towers and ramparts of Teleon. Then why did she have such a terrible, sinking feeling that this was the last time she and her family would ever be together?

Rain circled on an updraft as the Fey below approached the Faering Mists. With growing concern, Ellysetta regarded the bright glow of magic that danced in undulating flows along the mountaintops and filled the pass between the Rhakis and Silvermist ranges.

«I thought we might be able to fly over the Mists,»
she said.

His wings dipped and he circled in the opposite direction. «
Nei, the Fey who made the Mists safeguarded against that. If you wish to enter the Fading Lands, there is no way to bypass the Mists, no matter how high you fly or how deep you tunnel.»

«So we have no choice but to go through.»

«Aiyah.»

«What's it like?»

«I don't know. I've only passed through it myself once, to come to Celieria to find you. The magic of the Mists cares only who enters the Fading Lands, not who leaves.»

«Celierians tell tales about hunters and shepherds who wandered into them on a foggy day and disappeared, only to reappear months or even years later carrying tales about meeting the Shining Folk inside the Mists. Are those tales true?»
There were hundreds of such stories, each one more fantastical than the last. Some adventurers claimed to have joined ancient Fey in a wild hunt through misty forests; others spoke of sharing an intoxicating meal in a crystalline hall filled with music and Fey maidens so beautiful even the stoniest heart would break to cast eyes upon them. To accept such invitations, folk claimed, was to bid farewell to the life one knew, for time passed at a different pace for those fêted by the Fey, and the deeper in the mist one wandered, the swifter time passed in the world.

«
I
suspect there may be some truth to those tales,»
Rain answered. «
The ones who built the Mists would not have wanted to hurt innocents
—
but neither would they have wanted to allow those innocents to be used against the Fey.»

But what of not-so-innocents? Shepherds and hunters might escape with lost time the only price for their transgression, but others were not so fortunate. She'd heard of entire armies that had disappeared into the Mists, never to be seen again.

Below, the marching Fey narrowed to a column ten abreast, and the first rows of warriors plunged without hesitation into the shining mist. Another few chimes and it would be Rain and Ellie's turn.

Her heart beat faster as anxiety bloomed in her belly. «
How do you think the Mists will react to my Mage Marks?»

Rain hesitated, then said, «
You are the Feyreisa and a Tairen Soul. The Mists will realize that.»

Her stomach lurched. She heard the evasion in his voice. «
But you aren't certain, are you?»

His ears twitched, and a small jet of flame seared the air before them. «
That is why we are flying through rather than walking. Just hold tight to the saddle. I will get us through as quickly as I can.»

The last of the Fey below disappeared into the Faering Mist.

Rain banked a final time, then flew directly towards the shimmering veil of magic. Anything else Ellysetta might have said caught in her throat. The thick fog of the Mists dominated her visual field, endless white, ever-shifting, glimmering with rainbow lights.